Poems – Page 17 – Poetry Out Loud

This evening, as the twilight fell,

My younger children watched for me;

Like cherubs in the window framed,

I saw the smiling group of three.

While round and round the house I trudged,

Intent to walk a weary mile,

Oft as I passed within their range,

The little things would beck and smile.

They watched me, as Astronomers

Whose business lies in heaven afar,

Await, beside the slanting glass,

The re-appearance of a star.

Not so, not so, my pretty ones,

Seek stars in yonder cloudless sky;

But mark no steadfast path for me,

A comet dire and strange am I.

Now to the inmost spheres of light

Lifted, my wondering soul dilates,

Now dropped in endless depth of night,

My hope God’s slow recall awaits.

Among the shining I have shone,

Among the blessing, have been blest,

Then wearying years have held me bound

Where darkness deadness gives, not rest.

Between extremes distraught and rent,

I question not the way I go;

Who made me, gave it me, I deem,

Thus to aspire, to languish so.

But Comets too have holy laws,

Their fiery sinews to restrain,

And from their outmost wanderings

Are drawn to heaven’s dear heart again.

And ye, beloved ones, when ye know

What wild, erratic natures are,

Pray that the laws of heavenly force

Would hold and guide the Mother star.

What does he plant who plants a tree?
   He plants a friend of sun and sky;
He plants the flag of breezes free;
   The shaft of beauty, towering high;
   He plants a home to heaven anigh;
      For song and mother-croon of bird
      In hushed and happy twilight heard—
The treble of heaven’s harmony—
These things he plants who plants a tree.

What does he plant who plants a tree?
   He plants cool shade and tender rain,
And seed and bud of days to be,
   And years that fade and flush again;
      He plants the glory of the plain;
      He plants the forest’s heritage;
      The harvest of a coming age;
The joy that unborn eyes shall see—
These things he plants who plants a tree.

What does he plant who plants a tree?
   He plants, in sap and leaf and wood,
In love of home and loyalty
   And far-cast thought of civic good—
   His blessings on the neighborhood,
      Who in the hollow of His hand
      Holds all the growth of all our land—
A nation’s growth from sea to sea
Stirs in his heart who plants a tree.

All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,—

So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

Where have you been the long day through,

Little brothers of mine?

For soon the world shall belong to you,

Yours to mar or to build anew—

Have you been to learn what the world shall do,

Little brothers going home?

We have been to learn through the weary day

Where the great looms echo and crash and sway—

The world has willed it, and we obey,

Elder brother.

What did you learn till set of sun,

Little brothers of mine,

Down where the great looms wove and spun,

You who are many where we are one

(We whose day is so nearly done),

Little brothers toiling home?

We have learned the things that the mill-folk said,

How Man is cruel and God is dead…

And how to spin with an even thread,

Elder brother.

What did you win with the thing they taught,

Little brothers of mine,

You whose sons shall have strength you brought,

Fashion their lives of the faith you bought,

Follow afar the ways you sought,

Little brothers stealing home?

Shattered body and stunted brain,

Hearts made hard with the need of gain,

These we won and must give again,

Elder brother.

How shall the world fare in your hand,

Little brothers of mine,

When you shall stand where now we stand?

Will you lift a light in the darkened land

Or fire its ways with a burning brand,

Little brothers creeping home?

What of the way the world shall fare?

What the world has given the world must bear…

We are tired—ah, tired—and we cannot care,

Elder brother!

You were too kind to come at all.

The door closed on you, and my hall

Shivered in sudden naked shame.

I whispered it was not to blame

And followed you within, to where

You were awaited by my chair.

It was so small, and you sat down

With a so gracious smile—a frown

Would have gone better with that wall;

You were too kind to smile at all.

You stretched a hand toward the grate;

Its welcome was inadequate.

You looked about you and pretended

The carpet and the picture blended.

I looked—and all my furnishings

Had turned their heads: the sorry things!

You said you felt at home—a lie

My misery was finished by.

Even your guilelessness was gall.

You were too kind to come at all.

My father is a quiet man
With sober, steady ways;
For simile, a folded fan;
His nights are like his days.

My mother’s life is puritan,
No hint of cavalier,
A pool so calm you’re sure it can
Have little depth to fear.

And yet my father’s eyes can boast
How full his life has been;
There haunts them yet the languid ghost
Of some still sacred sin.

And though my mother chants of God,
And of the mystic river,
I’ve seen a bit of checkered sod
Set all her flesh aquiver.

Why should he deem it pure mischance
A son of his is fain
To do a naked tribal dance
Each time he hears the rain?

Why should she think it devil’s art
That all my songs should be
Of love and lovers, broken heart,
And wild sweet agony?

Who plants a seed begets a bud,
Extract of that same root;
Why marvel at the hectic blood
That flushes this wild fruit?

Little scavenger away,

touch not the door,

beat not the portal down,

cross not the sill,

silent until

my song, bright and shrill,

breathes out its lay.

Little scavenger avaunt,

tempt me with jeer and taunt,

yet you will wait to-day;

for it were surely ill

to mock and shout and revel;

it were more fit to tell

with flutes and calathes,

your mother’s praise.

^{(For Carl Van Vechten)}

I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;
There never was a spring like this;
It is an echo, that repeats
My last year’s song and next year’s bliss.
I know, in spite of all men say
Of Beauty, you have felt her most.
Yea, even in your grave her way
Is laid. Poor, troubled, lyric ghost,
Spring never was so fair and dear
As Beauty makes her seem this year.

I cannot hold my peace, John Keats,
I am as helpless in the toil
Of Spring as any lamb that bleats
To feel the solid earth recoil
Beneath his puny legs. Spring beats
Her tocsin call to those who love her,
And lo! the dogwood petals cover

Her breast with drifts of snow, and sleek
White gulls fly screaming to her, and hover
About her shoulders, and kiss her cheek,
While white and purple lilacs muster
A strength that bears them to a cluster
Of color and odor; for her sake
All things that slept are now awake.

And you and I, shall we lie still,
John Keats, while Beauty summons us?
Somehow I feel your sensitive will
Is pulsing up some tremulous
Sap road of a maple tree, whose leaves
Grow music as they grow, since your
Wild voice is in them, a harp that grieves
For life that opens death’s dark door.
Though dust, your fingers still can push
The Vision Splendid to a birth,
Though now they work as grass in the hush
Of the night on the broad sweet page of the earth.

“John Keats is dead,” they say, but I
Who hear your full insistent cry
In bud and blossom, leaf and tree,
Know John Keats still writes poetry.

And while my head is earthward bowed
To read new life sprung from your shroud,
Folks seeing me must think it strange
That merely spring should so derange
My mind. They do not know that you,
John Keats, keep revel with me, too.

^{*Spring, 1924}

Celestial choir! enthron’d in realms of light,
Columbia’s scenes of glorious toils I write.
While freedom’s cause her anxious breast alarms,
She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.
See mother earth her offspring’s fate bemoan,
And nations gaze at scenes before unknown!
See the bright beams of heaven’s revolving light
Involved in sorrows and the veil of night!

The Goddess comes, she moves divinely fair,
Olive and laurel binds Her golden hair:
Wherever shines this native of the skies,
Unnumber’d charms and recent graces rise.

Muse! Bow propitious while my pen relates
How pour her armies through a thousand gates,
As when Eolus heaven’s fair face deforms,
Enwrapp’d in tempest and a night of storms;
Astonish’d ocean feels the wild uproar,
The refluent surges beat the sounding shore;
Or think as leaves in Autumn’s golden reign,
Such, and so many, moves the warrior’s train.
In bright array they seek the work of war,
Where high unfurl’d the ensign waves in air.
Shall I to Washington their praise recite?
Enough thou know’st them in the fields of fight.
Thee, first in peace and honors—we demand
The grace and glory of thy martial band.
Fam’d for thy valour, for thy virtues more,
Hear every tongue thy guardian aid implore!

One century scarce perform’d its destined round,
When Gallic powers Columbia’s fury found;
And so may you, whoever dares disgrace
The land of freedom’s heaven-defended race!
Fix’d are the eyes of nations on the scales,
For in their hopes Columbia’s arm prevails.
Anon Britannia droops the pensive head,
While round increase the rising hills of dead.
Ah! Cruel blindness to Columbia’s state!
Lament thy thirst of boundless power too late.

Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,
Thy ev’ry action let the Goddess guide.
A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,
With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! Be thine.

Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf

Than that I may not disappoint myself;

That in my action I may soar as high

As I can now discern with this clear eye.

And next in value, which thy kindness lends,

That I may greatly disappoint my friends,

Howe’er they think or hope that it may be,

They may not dream how thou’st distinguished me.

That my weak hand may equal my firm faith,

And my life practise more than my tongue saith;

That my low conduct may not show,

Nor my relenting lines,

That I thy purpose did not know,

Or overrated thy designs.